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The other day, I hopped into a B or D (can't remember which) at 7av/53rd Street and seated myself. A guy plonked himself next to me at Rockefeller Center and immediately reached out into his backpack and pulled out his Dell notebook. Nothing unusual, except that he fired up Ubuntu, brought up some IDE and started coding away. He certainly wasn't tinkering with his machine or manipulating a spreadsheet - this was serious Java code. Now, if he was a consultant working on code in the subway, he would surely bill for it? Many other such people could want (and be ready to pay) to access the internet or at least get their cell phones working. Now, I know our cash-strapped MTA is piloting cellphone access in a few stations (14st?). So maybe here is a chance to get a few bucks while silencing a few critics as well. Instead of the "Holland Tunnel" model of cellphone access where carriers have been allowed to make their phones work (presumably for free - i.e. Port Authority isn't getting paid), they could use the airline model - where net and phone access are a paid service. That could earn revenue and keep the number of users down to a tolerable number. I should think this is technically feasible. Commercially viable?
The Palisades Parkway runs for about 100 miles or along or close to the Hudson river. When heading North, you can stop at a couple of lookouts which can give you impressive views of the city and the river. On a cold, early December morning, just after the first snow, everything seemed to stand still. The GWB looked majestic and serene - not adjectives that frequent users of the bridge would normally attach to it.
Count the taxis
If you said 4, you flunked. There is a 5th one hidden on the far side. I happened to wait outside the big Macy's for 15 min - and must have seen a hundred taxis.
And then there were the cyclists and buses
Factor in the foot traffic and you have true diversity of human transportation
I have always laughed at the idea of showing up at a retail store at 5 am and then waiting in a long line to pick up something which I could have done without anyway. But this time, with better half in tow, I actually decided to participate in the black Friday madness. And madness is just what it is.
After a 3 month hiatus (when I was on a project outside New York), I am back to being a regular on the"E" (For those who are not familiar with what I am referring to, The New York E Subway Line is what I mean). I do the WTC - 7Av/53rd street stretch daily. The E trainset composition is now all R160 - which is great. That conversion of trainsets was well underway even before my travel. The other change I noticed was that, in off-peak hours, they open only one door per car when the trains wait at WTC. I am guessing this is for energy conservation ans seems like a sensible move. The only catch is that, if you choose to walk past a car to the next one, you have to recalibrate your judgement - for you cannot just hop into the next door.
7Av/53rd Street is unique in that you can seemingly head off in opposite directions while actually going the same way. So, on the upper level, you have the "E" going one way and the "B" and "D" going the other way but you can take either and still get to, say, W4 street.
The USS New York - a battleship that has 7 tons of steel from WTC recycled into its hull - sailed into New York on the Hudson river yesterday (Nov 2). It was quite a spectacle. It was about 8am on a gloomy morning. The all grey USS New York almost blended in the background and the photos look like they are black and white!
I think all concerned should pause and reflect on the events on NW flight188 a little bit. I think suspending the pilots' FAA license was premature. Yes - the incident was quite shocking though not completely unprecendented. No harm was done though alarm bells had gone off and there were red faces all around. Apparently Northwest allowed pilots to use laptops (like passengers can), though Delta does not. There was a stiff tailwind which got the airplane to the Minneapolis area a little earlier than usual. An unusual sequence of events led to pilots missing some of the earlier messages (stewardess came in and was talking to the first officer while the pilot went for a restroom break). Both pilots apparently had spotless records. It doesn't excuse their preoccupation with laptops and they do need to face disciplinary action. But, given the combination of events, I don't think ending their flying career is right - at least not yet. Can other forms of penalties not do? Just the negative publicity in the media is severe, if not sufficient, punishment. Do the FAA and Delta need to be seen taking extraordinarily stern action given how far things had gone - jets being scrambled, White House being informed etc.? The incident of a Delta flight landing on a taxiway in Atlanta seems more serious to me - but that somehow didn't get the same level of attention.
Last Sunday (Oct 25) was a very nice fall day - close to perfect from a photographer's point of view. As we approached sunset, multicolored hues took over the sky. Pink gave way to amber, orange, yellow and red. Ferries and boats docked at the Liberty Marina glistened and the canal shimmered. All in all, a pretty picture.
A picture is worth a 1000 words? Well, most Fall pictures should be. This was taken at Lake George. We drove on the Taconic State Parkway, which was itself quite pretty. We got to the Lake George area probably 2-3 days before peak color. unseasonably warm weather probably delayed fall a little bit. But itwas very nice anyway.
More specifically, thank you to the Delta agent who was manning gate D5 at Minneapolis airport on Sep 11, '09 at around 4.30 pm or so. Didn't get his name, unfortunately. As I said in my previous post, this is an account of Continental leaving me in the lurch while Delta came to my rescue. It was a somewhat bad weather day in New Jersey and Continental had cancelled the 6.25 pm flight to Newark - on which I was booked. The Continental call center and the airport agents basically said I'd need to come back next morning - and that they were only trying to accommodate passengers with connections onto Delta and other flights to the NYC area airports. I was in no mood to wait overnight, so I called Orbitz for business (our official travel facilitator) and got myself a one way ticket to La Guardia (LGA) on a Delta flight for over $600. I then noticed that the 4pm Delta flight to Newark had still not left and decided to try my luck on that one (becase Newark works better for me than LGA).
So I sauntered to gate D5 where the Delta agent heard me out and I casually also mentioned that I was from the cancelled Continental flight. He saw that there were a few seats on the Newark flight. Instead of just transferring me from the Delta LGA flight onto it, he called Continental on his own, verified my details and got them to transfer me onto the Delta flight. This meant that my new Delta ticket was redundant. He further reminded me that Delta/Northwest had a policy allowing cancellation of a ticket within 24 hours with no penalty. Sure enough, I was able to cancel the ticket with no trouble and travel to Newark on Delta on the Continental ticket. In essence, the Delta agent did for me what the Continental guys didn't. And he saved me (or, in this case, my company) $600 and the trouble of traveling home from LGA. Now that was customer service that made a difference.
To be fair, Continental has been reasonably reliable and they do a pretty good job of updating flight status, their online experience is good and, yes, they do serve meaningful (free) food on their flights. But I don't particularly like the tiny Embraer 145s that they operate on EWR-MSP (Delta flies bigger Embraer 190 or Airbus) and, on this occasion, Delta beat Continental on the ground as well.
